Friday, March 27th, 2015 at 12:01am

Bosque Brewing Company recently won the Brewing News National IPA Challenge with its Scale Tipper. (Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Local breweries have fun when it comes to competing against each other in the New Mexico IPA Challenge, but Albuquerque breweries just took winning to a whole new level – a national one.

Bosque Brewing Co.’s Scale Tipper recently won this year’s National IPA Championship held annually by Brewing News. It stole the crown away from Albuquerque’s La Cumbre Brewing Company, which won with its Project Dank last year.

Albuquerque was well represented in the “Elite Eight,” capturing three of the top eight spots with Canteen Brewhouse’s Exodus IPA, Bosque Brewing’s Scale Tipper and La Cumbre’s Project Dank, according to New Mexico Brewers Guild director Christopher Goblet. Canteen Brewhouse and Bosque Brewing made it to the final round with Bosque’s Scale Tipper prevailing.

Bosque Brewing’s Director of Operations Gabe Jensen said Bosque is ecstatic about the win. He added that waiting week after week to see how the IPAs were doing was “nerve-racking.” He said going head-to-head against Canteen Brewhouse made it that much more fun, and competing against many IPAs from high-pedigreed breweries made the competition results hard to predict.

The 2015 bracket began with 128 IPAs entered in the competition by brewers from around the country. The competition ran over a period of five weeks. There were 10 entries from eight New Mexico breweries: Bosque Brewing, Canteen Brewhouse, La Cumbre Brewing Co., Boxing Bear Brewing Co., Rio Grande Brewing Co., Santa Fe Brewing Co., Second Street Brewery and Blue Corn Brewery.

Bosque Brewing entered two of its IPAs: Scale Tipper and Riverwalker IPA created by head brewer John Bullard.

As the competition progressed and people became aware of Scale Tipper beating out the competition round after round, its supply dwindled at all three Bosque Brewing’s locations in Albuquerque and Las Cruces, according to Jensen.

But don’t fret. Bosque Brewing is in the process of making more and hopes to hold a release party for the new batch of Scale Tipper in April, possibly on or around April 10, he said. To hold you over, its Riverwalker IPA is available.

“Riverwalker starts with a light copper base of pale, caramel, and wheat malts, which provide a medium-bodied backbone for our flagship IPA,” according to Bosque Brewing tasting notes provided by Jensen. “But that’s just setting the stage for the hops, where it’s all about big tropics and citrus. El Dorado, Mosaic, and Simcoe are the stars in this six-hop blend.”